


i could lift you up (i could show you what you wanna see & take you where you wanna be)

by makethegirlmad



Category: The Amazing Spider-Man (Movies - Webb)
Genre: Canon Death, Depression, F/M, Mental Illness, Suicidal Thoughts, Technically not Genderbent, Violence, and Peter Parker plays the part of Awkward Boyfriend, bipolar disease, mjwatsonifyousquint, some language, the one where Gwen Stacy is Spiderwoman
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-31
Updated: 2014-10-31
Packaged: 2018-02-23 07:19:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2539148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/makethegirlmad/pseuds/makethegirlmad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gwen Stacy's never found it easy to explain why she became a superhero, but she knows why she stays one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i could lift you up (i could show you what you wanna see & take you where you wanna be)

**Author's Note:**

> TRIGGER WARNINGS: canon character death; some disturbing violence and imagery; suicidal thoughts/actions; internalized sexism; external sexism; bipolar disease; depression; self-destructive tendencies. 
> 
> GWEN STACY'S SPIDERWOMAN COSTUME: I chose to write this fic featuring [Robbi](http://tremoloep.tumblr.com/post/87984115284/gwen-stacy-as-spider-woman) [Rodriguez's](http://superasente.tumblr.com/post/101823692157/jake-bartok-http-jakebartok-tumblr-com-larry) [costume](http://gibsoncomics.com/post/88217748638/spider-gwen-warm-up-love-that-new-costume-by), but NOT his adaptation.
> 
> 1\. I do not own Gwen Stacy or Peter Parker or Spiderman. All rights belong to Marvel, however, they really should refrain from fridging their amazing women so I don't have to write up huge novel-length redemption pieces. If you can't hear the passive-aggressive "fuck you Marvel" in my tone then you are reading this wrong.
> 
> 2\. THIS IS NOT THE FULL MONSTROSITY I HAVE PLANNED. This is only the beginning. Cue evil laughter. Everything that happened in TASM2 will be in the next installment, plus companion pieces. Buckle up, bitch.
> 
> 3\. I look really cute right now. There's a nice, calming rain outside. It's somewhere between 4:00 AM and 5:00 AM. The apartment is filled with mist. It's probably a Thursday.
> 
> 4\. Oh and by the way, fuck you Marvel.

 

 

 

 

Gwen Stacy's never found it easy to explain why she became a superhero, but she knows why she stays one.

 

 

 

 

The following things have always frightened Gwen Stacy: things she doesn't understand, things she can't fight, things that are intangible. She grew up in a Catholic household because her parents made her, and it's left its mark on her: the guilt she shrugs away, just words, just wind ( _I won't be made to feel guilty for myself_ ), but a fear, a fear of judgment, of this all-knowing thing that hovers over her shoulder with expectations like her mother's, a condemnation like her father's, well, that's more complicated.

(She doesn't remember when or how she stopped believing in a loving and benevolent almighty God; it snuck up on her, the way these things do, the way Spiderwoman did.)

Gwen Stacy doesn't believe in any god.

She believes they can be created, though.

 

 

 

 

Four years old, and she's twirling around corners, bouncing off the walls, clinging to her mother's leg, and she doesn't look too hard at her father and he doesn't look too hard at her, but everyone knows Captain Stacy's daughter, a terror on two legs, the little dancer, the ballerina, and everyone knows--"be good," "do good," "good, Gwen," "listen to your father"--Gwen Stacy is going to be a good girl.

(She thinks back to that years later, when she's built enough sharp edges around herself, and thinks  _good girl,_ shudders. Men have ruined the term for her, and she can't think "good girl" or "bad girl" without any disgusting sexual connotation and really, she should be used to it by now--)

 _Be careful, be brave, be good, don't disappoint me,_  her father says with his eyes, and she does as she's told because Gwen Stacy, four years old, is a Good Girl.

When she was little her father would swing her down from his shoulders because she liked to fly. She could tilt her head up and see him there, smiling, his hands warm on her wrists, eyes bright, never letting go.

 

 

 

 

 

Peter Parker.

He has this whole spiel about destiny--and power, and responsibility, the old mantra that he keeps spitting out whenever Gwen brings it up--and she's pretty sure he learned it from his dead uncle, so of course she doesn't tell him when it gets repetitive.

The thing is, though--Gwen has never believed much in destiny.

It could just as easily have been Tina, Raz, or even Peter, or any of the interns, or the janitorial staff, or anyone else who worked in the building.

"You mean like Connors?" Peter had asked her.

(His name still makes her tremble.)

"Connors was different," Gwen says seriously, suppressing her shudder when she says his name. "He did it anyway."

"Exactly," Peter says, and he takes her chin in his hand. "it was destiny."

"I don't believe in destiny," Gwen says, flatly. "I'm a realist."

"Then why do you still put on the mask?" Peter asks, and Gwen turns her head towards her city, lets his hand fall away.

"I told you, dumbass, I'm a realist."

 

 

 

 

 

 

That isn't exactly where it starts, though. It starts with the internship.

Well.  _Actually._ It starts with Jane Brown.

Gwen Stacy, seventh grade, knows exactly what she wants to become--she wants to be a ballerina. Colorful costumes and crimson ballgowns, swirling music, the Tchaikovsky made of fire and breath, frenetic and wild and smoking in the air _._ Mom's been sending her to lessons since she was three, and Gwen has practiced curling her fingers over the bar, snapping back her toes, listening to the crack of her bones on  _pointe,_ how to make her movements gentle when the pain is a burning fire in her foot, and she's good. Maybe not good enough for scholarships, but good enough to learn that the body can do almost anything you tell it to.

And if post-puberty Gwendolyn Stacy, seventh grade New Yorker, tells her body to  _grow up, be graceful, don't embarrass me,_  then one day it does exactly that.

Jane Brown is the prettiest girl in Gwen's middle school, despite being new for three weeks. Gwen knows her by association, because Jane goes to every party and flirts outrageously and lives like a house on fire, and she's everything Gwen's ever wanted to be, everything that's not what a Good Girl is.

She and Gwen are partnered up for the Science Fair by Mr. Shurly, a passionless, balding middle-aged teacher who had graduated from Stanford but couldn't find work outside of his research departments, and he'd given them the topic  _Ant Farm._

Jane, Gwen remembers, had been horrified. Horrified and dramatic. "We can't just let him relegate the two of us to such an unoriginal, mediocre idea for the freaking  _Science Fair._ We have to do something. I'm going to ask him to change it."

Gwen had shrugged. "It wouldn't be a whole lot of work, would it? Maybe we should keep it that way."

Jane had rolled her eyes. "You are so lazy. I bet that if this were a ballet competition you'd be working your butt off."

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Gwen wasn't actually lazy. She didn't have a problem with science. She made good grades. She did well on lab assignments and projects. She never worried about hiding her report card from her parents. Good kid Gwen, that's who she was.

Jane was wrong about one thing, though: Gwen was very, very ambitious. It's the best thing about her. Before serums and lizard monsters and Oscorp and confused, blinking boys. It's  _still_  the best thing about her.

But that's later. This is her genesis.)

Jane asks, "Do you know anything about programming?"

Gwen shrugs, says, "No." Gwen's never been afraid to admit to not knowing something. So what? She can always _learn_. "I'll figure it out."

The end result is this: Gwen and Jane down about fifty Redbulls each, sleep over at each others' houses for three weekends straight, almost crash Jane's computer, and place second at the fair.

Mr. Shurly hadn't even expected that anybody'd get that far. He was quite happy to gobble up the attention, "oh yes, I assigned them the topic, I really want my students to push their limits"--and Jane and Gwen grew apart. Last Gwen had heard Jane and her family moved to Florida for her mother's job.

But winning didn't matter. Science did. Gwen grabbed her father's computer and nearly broke the printer with lab sheets, summer programs she could apply for. When she hands her mother a form for science camp, her mother frowns. "I thought you wanted to go to dance camp."

"Let her go," her father said. He ruffled Gwen's hair. "It'll be a great learning experience." And her mother pursed her lips but signed, and Gwen quit ballet and spent the summer dissecting lamb's eyes and cow hearts. Her mother wanted her to keep her dance lessons, to hold onto ballet (be a good girl, Gwen), but when Gwen brought home the Midtown Science High registration forms instead of the ones for Tate Prep, it seemed her mother finally resigned to Gwen's new dream.

 

 

 

 

 

 

High school is a dream come true.

Gwen's kidding. High school is actually a joke.

Gwen Stacy, fourteen years old, and she reinvents herself when she gets to Midtown Science, trades her fruit-scented lip balms for sleek lipsticks with names of cities that she has never seen, dark red embers on her mouth that she finds almost embarrassing until she trains herself not to. She sits in front of her mirror until she gets it right, or she decides to wipe it off, and when she walks across the street in her McQueen dress and new wedges, Peter Parker stops to stare.

Not that it matters--not many people pay attention to the new girl in neat, expensive clothes. Gwen knows she doesn't fit in. Already, someone had pointed at her and whispered  _anal_ in a mean voice.

(And, yeah, she's neat. Yeah, she spent five minutes smoothing her hair in the morning. So what?)

Gwen's fourteen and in pretty dresses, the apple of her father's eye and her mother's little ballerina, too delicate for this school, for this world she's thrust herself into ( _I direct my own destiny_ ), but she marches through the doors of Midtown Science High on her first day, hair glowing like a beacon.

"I've arrived," says Gwen Stacy, and if no one hears her, well. That's not such a problem, is it? She'll just have to say it louder.

 

 

 

 

 

Gwen wins competitions. She wins debate, Science Olympiad, and leads the Robotics team into victory twice at Regionals. She tutors after school. She's up-and-running for Class President. She's made it into the school paper more times than she cares to count.

Her parents are proud of her but bewildered. They're wondering about their little ballerina, when Gwen had replaced her pink ribbon shoes and tutus with science trophies from school.  _Are you sure it's what you want,_ her father had asked, with a crinkle in his forehead, as her mother folded and cut and pasted newspaper clippings with Gwen's name scrawled all over, and Gwen loves her dad, but...

She walks down the hallways in school and hears the snickers from boys and girls alike, the whispers,  _uptight slut, bet she's easy, I'd so do her, what a whore, thinks she's so smart, rich and bratty. What a goodbad girl._

In the newspaper clippings her mother pastes on the fridge the headlines are  _The beautiful Gwen Stacy rips up regionals!_ or  _Comment made by smokin' hot captain._

"Nice tits," one guy leered down at her chest, and she watched as his eyes fucking moved down, down, and then up again.

And that's what makes her snap out a smile, and say,

"Thanks. They cost a fortune."

 

 

 

 

 

The rumor that Gwen Stacy had breast implants spread like wildfire. That's the beauty about being a girl in high school--give them an inch, and, well.

Which is kind of the reason why, when Gwen's informed that she made valedictorian, she bursts out laughing.

Jesus Christ.

It did come as a sort of surprise, though. She was sure it would've been Andy Xu. Or Peter Parker. Hell, anybody else. Especially with the boob job rumor floating around. She's sure that if any teacher had heard it, they'd whip that title away in no time, regardless of her pristine grades. Because...well, she's a woman, isn't she?

It doesn't matter, though. Gwen knew she was at the top. She'd made sure of it. People like Gwen are ambitious folk. People like Gwen are cunning and ruthless. People like Gwen aren't Good Girls, but they're good at what they do. There are no people like Gwen.

 

 

 

 

 

Peter Parker follows her around. They have similar class schedules, they hang around the same people--but still. It's a little odd.

Not that Gwen's complaining, or anything. Because. Peter's  _hot,_ she has eyes. It's puzzling how he never thought to use that to his advantage in high school. He'd get bullied way less, for one. Gwen's attractive, and it comes with the disadvantage that nobody will ever take her seriously, but she's learned to wield beauty like a whip, use it against people, let them underestimate her. Parker could use a lesson.

Gwen can only come to the conclusion that Peter Parker did not  _know_ that he was attractive, which was, well. It's a bit pathetic, to be honest.

At least Gwen's self-aware.

 

 

 

 

 

(And a year, maybe two years later--Gwen sees her name on the list--valedictorian, number one.  _Peter Parker,_ right underneath. She's not surprised in the least. Neither is he.)

 

 

 

 

  

And, well, see.

Peter believes in things. This is where he and Gwen stop meeting in the middle and fall apart in opposite directions. Fate, destiny, power, responsibility. Peter had grown up all his life believing in the right direction of things, and Uncle Ben dying had only served to seal the lid shut on that container. Tight.

Gwen likes to marvel at chance, at probability, the idea of a chaotic world. The universe is not set. Certain things fall into place (or are  _made_ to fall into place), and bam. Results. There is no order. There is no predetermined storyline.

And. The earth is round, and gravity makes things fall, and Gwen's father pins a badge to his chest every morning, like clockwork, and Gwen knows the meaning of responsibility, too ( _you owe the world your gifts, Gwen_ ). 

(No one controls my destiny, she said to him once, except me.

Peter shook his head at that. That's what they want you to think, he said, and she never asked him who 'they' were.)

Peter always brings up the argument that if Gwen had worked in biometrics, none of this would have happened, or if Gwen had lost interest in biomed, she would never have gone to work under the name of one Dr. Curt Connors, or even if she'd never met Jane Brown, she'd have gone on to become a ballerina.

"Say you signed to work under Kafta, or Marvelo. Or maybe not even Oscorp, maybe you applied to Stark Industries. What then?" Peter's eyes shined when he got like this. "None of this would have happened, Gwen. You would never have become Spiderwoman. You were meant to be her. It was fate."

Gwen  _would_ ask Peter if he thought that Uncle Ben dying had been "fate", but she doesn't. She's snappy and a little too-smart, but she's not a total bitch.

And, look. There are a lot of things to like about Peter--a  _lot_ , he's a good boy and he'd never say this to hurt her--but the fact that he keeps insinuating that her father's death was "inevitable" is not one of them.

 

 

 

 

Anyway. Gwen applies for an internship under Dr. Curt Connors. She gets it, of course, because she's the best.

Dr. Connors is a kind, moral man, with a handsome smile and a gentle voice. When she walked in for the interview he never talked down to her. His eyes stayed above her neck, which she appreciated. She didn't let her eyes wander to his stump. He hired her on the spot, because the earth orbits the sun and gravity makes things fall and dominoes topple and people like Gwen always win and there are no people like Gwen.

 

 

 

 

 

(Fate,Peter would say. Destiny. Predestined storyline.

Shut up, Gwen would snap. Choice. Chaos. Nonlinear.

_I'm Spiderwoman._

_I don't need a god when I can make my own_.

And Peter would laugh with his eyes, silent and hard. The kind Gwen hated.

_Don't you dare tell me about creating gods, Gwen._

_I created Connors. My father created you._ )

 

 

 

 

 

Oscorp is the bomb. All their equipment is state-of-the-art and funded by suspiciously wealthy benefactors. She gets her own lab and table. She gets test tubes that shine from ruthless polishings. She gets access to confidential documents about virtually everything in the world, ranging from vaccines to libraries of samples.

And that's life. It's good.

World: 0

Gwen Stacy: everything

 

 

 

 

  

Gwen loves her father. That's something to get straight, right now. She loves him. His straight jaw is stamped with the word Provider, and he makes her hot chocolate whenever she asks and he swung her from her wrists when she was younger and he pins a badge to his chest every morning--

(that last one is the  _single_  thing Gwen hates about him. The single thing.)

\--and he's a good man. He is. 

George Stacy loves her back. George Stacy is proud of Gwen--it's in his smile and his pasta salads and the way he pats her on the back when she brings home her test scores. He is proud of Gwen but he doesn't, will never, understand her.

George Stacy raised a respectable family, four good kids and a beautiful wife, and he wants the same for Gwen, that perfect life--but  _that's not what she wants._ It's not what she wants, and he doesn't understand why, can't understand why.

George Stacy is not narrow-minded. He is, however, stubborn. And protective. And he clings to that future for Gwen.

But Gwen is a Good Girl when she can help it, a bad one when she can't, and for all her knowledge, sometimes her father opens his mouth and she can't understand a word he's saying.  

"That's my good girl," he exclaims at her latest trophy, test score, newspaper clipping. But Gwen is not. Gwen sneaks out at night. Gwen dates boys behind his back. Gwen smokes cigarettes when nobody is looking. Gwen skips class. Gwen makes up boob job rumors at school. Gwen is something bad wallpapered with floral or paisley, and this is something that Gwen knows, that Gwen swallows every night--she is not a Good Girl. 

 

 

 

 

 

And here's the deal with Dr. Connors:

He's her mentor. He's kind. He's British. He has one arm, but his disability does not define him and all he is encompasses that. He's charmingly self-deprecating. He hangs year-round Christmas lights in the intern lab. He doesn't give a shit if Gwen is Good or Bad, which is one of the reasons she favors him, at first.

Gwen works with him for about a year before he promotes her to head intern. He took her out to coffee once, out of professional bounds, and admitted that she was like the daughter he never had. It'd made her happy.

( _I already have a father,_ she'd told him, jokingly, and he'd laughed.  _True, true. I'd never imagine taking his place._

And Gwen will remember that conversation for the rest of her life, and the image of Connors' lizard nails ripping through her father's spine will haunt her until she dies. Not replace. Destroy.)

 

 

 

 

 

Working at Oscorp is like having a badge. Not the kind of badge her father wears, the one he clips onto his chest whenever he goes out to shoot people in the line of duty. Nowhere near that kind.

Oscorp is a privilege. Oscorp is her dream-come-true. Oscorp is her fairytale happily ever after.

And if the universe were abiding by  _her_ rules, it would've been the end of her story. No prince, no romance, no thanks.

But the universe is chaotic, so of course not. Or, alternatively: as  _fate_  would have it, her story doesn't end here.

 

 

 

  

Years later, Gwen will look back on this day, pull a Peter Parker, and wonder what else could have happened, had she not taken Tina's place in the lab. What would have gone down if her fellow intern hadn't been ill on the same day a very important lab report was due. How Gwen's life would have played out if Tina hadn't lost the original genome samples.

The day starts out normal, but they always do. Gwen leaves school for her internship at 2:00. She's getting class credit for it anyway, so she decides to bail on fourth period.

Along the way, Tina sends her about fifty emergency pages. When those don't work, Gwen hears her phone bleep.

_help i think i accidentally ate a piece of lint_

And then, literally two seconds later:

_nevermind it was a shred of coconut_

_stop eating everything in sight,_ Gwen texts back. She's on the subway, headed for the building. The tunnel is nearly empty.  _aren't you supposed to be working_

_i'm sick. feel awful._

_sorry._ Gwen pockets her phone, but it bleeps again. Someone on the subway glares at her. Gwen switches her phone to silent.

 _can u do me a fav,_ Tina writes,and Gwen, who had been there when Tina had been too drunk to stand at the intern's Christmas party, and also that time when Tina had come to work hungover and puked onto the lab tiles and the entire floor had to be sealed off because the Oscorp janitors thought it was biochemical waste, knows that she should say no.

_no. absolutely not._

_come on gwen, please. today's coat check day, and i left the dna samples at my workstation. could you just pick them up and give them to biometrics?_

And here is the pivotal moment: Gwen says  _yes._

 

 

 

 

 

Again, Peter would probably like to insert here--Tina was sick, and she'd mixed up the samples, and Gwen had said  _yes._

It was all, he'd say, fate.

That's not the point of the story, though. The point is that Gwen says yes. Gwen could flip a coin and call it probability, but when Peter rolls the die on a draw it's  _predestined,_ something meant to be. She doesn't understand that, and never will.

Peter's strange, but kind, a consequence of the heavyset trauma of losing his parents so young, of losing his uncle so young. Gwen takes a look at  _her_ family--brother, brother, brother, father, mother, and she feels so full. Peter has Aunt May, and that woman would build up his family from the bare bones if she could, would tack herself along with them, would fold him up and put him somewhere safe and give Peter a home, if only he'd wanted one from her, if only he could let go of the past.

("What did you want to be when you grew up?" Gwen had asked him once, and his face darkened.

"I wanted to be my father.")

Summer camp, eighth grade.

Gwen's fallen in love twice in her life, and the first time it was with a dissection.

She's never gotten over it, never even tried. It's still there, humming beneath her fingertips, the easy flow of how things can fit together, how under her watchful, doting parentage she can strip and slice and cut and spread, an intricate map of gears and clockwork, and Gwen's running on three hours of sleep because her cabin mates had offered her a cigarette last night and they'd had to hide from the counselors. Three hours, and she's bent over the cat with tweezers, formaldehyde probably giving her brain damage, eyes stinging, staring her way through networks of neurons and flesh-colored orbs, the inner workings of an animal, this is what nature intended, this is who she is, this is who  _everyone_ is. Gwen's never been able to fathom reality without picking it apart and building it a different way, and she sees no reason to start now. For all she pits herself against commitment, the steady rush of  _home_ has always been clouded thick around her work, and she's long since resigned herself to the fact that she's better with science, with data and autopsies and organisms, than she is with people.

The second time, with Peter, had been less about stability, more about surprise. Gwen hadn’t known it was possible to fall headlong into something she’d been feeling for months; she scrambled and scrabbled to catch up, to touch every loose end, to puzzle it out. It’d been something she couldn’t decipher with data, something so odd and twisted it was difficult to wrap her mind around, like Peter had been speaking in code.

Peter hadn't waited for her to find out, hadn’t stayed stagnant, just turned around and didn’t look back to make sure she was following. She appreciates that, likes that neither of them expect the other to wait. They have their own lives, and however intertwined they are--and Gwen hopes it's for a long, long time--they are not each others' world. Science had taught her that love is patient, and timeless. Peter taught her that love hurts, and love dies.

And Gwen said  _yes_ because science is her first love, always, a love that lasts far longer and deeper than any boy's could compare, a love that transcends the subject and surpasses Gwen herself. People like Gwen put themselves first, and there are no people like Gwen.

 

 

 

 

 Gwen says  _yes,_ and goes to Oscorp, and grabs Tina's tray of petri dishes, and then she stumbles on something--it could have been a pin, or a test tube--and the tray tips, and one of the petri dishes slides off the tray and onto the floor. It shatters.

Sometimes it's pretty fucking terrifying to work at Oscorp. There are genetically modified animals in cages, dangerous chemicals that could burn out all of Gwen's hair, and stacks and stacks of paperwork. 

That being said, the petri dish samples could be anything, from microscopic bacteria to invisible micro-insects. It's hard to tell, with Oscorp.

"Shit." Gwen falls to her knees, places the tray safely away at arm's length, and then goes back to the shattered dish. "Shit shit shit."

She's panicking, thinks quick. These are going to biometrics, which means they're most likely human DNA samples. Biometrics lines them up for tests all the time--they were probably just for some rudimentary equipment checking.

Easy enough to fix. Gwen runs and grabs another petri dish, then swabs her own DNA, swipes it in the dish. There. Problem solved. Crisis averted. Tina won't get fired, and neither will she.

She takes the tray to biometrics and puts it out of her mind.

 

 

 

 

 

This is where Gwen sort of,  _kind of_ has to agree with Peter.

There are 35,000 species of spiders in the world, grouped into seventy different families. Oscorp owns a member of sixty-three of those families in their Special Projects unit. Her DNA would have been spliced into roughly one eighth of them.

She and Peter have both run the calculation over and over again in their heads. The chances of Gwen getting bitten by a stray spider that just  _happened_ to be spliced with the DNA she  _replaced_ in Tina's petri dish? She's gone over it in her head so many times that she's sick of it, sick of thinking. Really, it doesn't matter if this was predetermined or destiny. It doesn't matter if she lives in a chaotic world. All that matters is that it happened. And there's no going back.

 

 

 

  

"Ladies, come on." Connors smiles, and Gwen hands him the  **GAMMA EQ.** petri dish. She glances down at it, bites her lip.

"Say doc, where's this going?"

Connors raises his eyebrows. "I'm proofing an equation I wrote. Gene splicing, that sort of thing."

"Right." Now Gwen remembers. The equation. Dr. Connor's book. "I remember reading your book. Have you solved it yet?"

"Made a breakthrough?" Tina pulls out her phone and snaps a photo of her station. There are strange plants growing everywhere, stems and vines spilling over the table onto the floor. "Writing a new book?"

"You are both getting free, signed copies." Connors smiles and turns. "I hope you're working hard! Tina, that phone is only to be used for workstation purposes. And snapchatting."

"Have fun on your date tonight!" Tina hollers, and Gwen nudges her with an elbow. She feels better about the DNA sample now. If Connors is only using it for theoretical equations, it should be fine.

And the thing about Gwen: she  _sucks_  at predicting the future. You can't assign fortune-telling to a realist. It doesn't work out.

 

 

 

 

 

At school Gwen puts up with sexist comments (the boob job thing from last semester  _still_  won't go away), idiots, and general incompetence. Her friends are both happy for and jealous of her about Oscorp--every kid in Midtown Science is. And to top it all off, Peter Parker snaps photos of her when he thinks she isn't looking.

She doesn't get it, doesn't get him--he's in yearbook, he does some independent photography for anybody who asks (she wonders if any of the girls in their class have ever modeled for him, and then shakes the thought from her mind). But she's not doing anything noteworthy. She's eating lunch. She's reading a book. She's tutoring Flash.

The fifth time it happens Gwen's sick of it, goes up to him and knocks the camera straight from his hands. It hits the floor and shatters. Peter yelps.

"What the hell are you doing?" Gwen puts her hands on her hips. Peter Parker shrinks away.

"I'm, uh, I'm--" Peter doesn't seem to know what to do with his hands. Gwen slaps them away.

"Why are you acting like such a  _creep?"_

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" Peter puts his hands up, which is ridiculous, because Gwen could never take him in a fight. "I won't do it again, I'm sorry."

"What the  _hell."_

"I'm sorry, it's just. You're a really good subject." Subject.

She's a  _person._

(She'll forgive him for this one day, but that day is not today. Bullies don't toss Peter around anymore, and the least he could do is not photograph her.)

Peter doesn't look like he's talking to her. He stares at the ground, like he's angry with it. "I just think you're really great. And I, um. I like taking pictures of you. That sounds so wrong. Fuck. I'm sorry."

Gwen isn't so easily swayed by his comments. She's gotten used to them over the years. Gwen Stacy, seventeen, and she's learned--that everything has a price, that people are never as nice as they seem, that your enemies teach you the best tricks, that a boy smiling doesn't necessarily mean it, that people will use her beauty, her own  _body_  against her, for anything, if she lets them.

"A police officer would call it  _stalking,"_ she says. And then she snaps out something about her father being a captain in the NYPD, because sometimes you have to play that card. Peter grows pale. 

"Point one at me again and I will  _rain_  down breech of privacy lawsuits on you for the rest of your life," Gwen snarls, and then she turns, because people don't get away with disrespecting her. Not Gwen Stacy.

("And that. That really did it, for me."

Gwen stares at Peter. "Wow. Really? Me threatening to sue you turned you on?"

Peter shrugs. "I mean, I almost wet my pants, but yeah."

And Gwen thinks about Aunt May, sad eyes and messy hair but a length of steel within her a mile wide--and realizes that strong women don't make Peter Parker shrivel, they make him  _swoon._ )

 

 

 

 

" _Second_  best? Are you sure?" Peter's frowning. Dr. Connors smiles patiently. The group waits, less patiently.

Gwen smiles her murder-happy smile at him and he can barely hold back a cringe.

"Pretty sure." She says it with absolute, cold certainty, ice couldn't melt.

 

 

 

 

Gwen leaves the group right then, trusting Tina to take her place. She can see Peter's sweater through all the business suits and lab coats. She jogs to hurry up, which is not an easy task in the shoes she's wearing.

(Gwen loves these boots. They go up to mid-thigh. She loves pairing them with miniskirts and walking around her school like she owns it. Which she practically does.)

She grabs the back of his arm. Peter whirls around.

"First the pictures, now this? Are you  _following_ me?"

"No! No, I--"

"Parker, you are seriously getting on my nerves now. You have one minute,  _one,_ to get the hell out of my workplace."

"You don't understand," Peter's saying, and then he's off, babbling about Connors' gamma equation, reading his book, something about a briefcase, "and I think I found it, I found the missing variable, I can help--"

And he talks about Richard Parker and Curt Connors working together, about Mr. Singpurwallah with the Gamma equation, and how Peter thinks he's found the variable, and Gwen shakes her head.

"Mr. Singpurwallah? He's Norman Osborne's correspondent." Gwen had seen him prowling around her labs occasionally. He and Connors never got along.

" _Osborne's_ correspondent? What's he doing with the gamma equation?"

"Probably helping Connors. They're putting pressure on his department to speed up the creation of a regenerative property serum. Which means," Gwen says slowly, putting it together, "he probably needs that equation."

"Yes. If I could just talk to Connors alone. I'll only need a few minutes. Can you get me to him?"

"No." She tells him, "No. You impersonated an intern, and I'm not lying for you. Get out of my workplace before I call security."

Peter stares at her for a minute. He lets out a breath.

"Sorry to keep bothering you," he mutters at the floor, and walks past her. Gwen breathes shallowly.

Then Singpurwallah walks by.

Gwen sees the file tucked under his arm. Peter was right. There it is, the gamma equation.

The clock ticks. People file down the hallway. In the distance she can hear Tina directing the group of interns.

"Shit," she mutters, and then runs after him.

 

 

 

 

 

Strict parents raise rebellious kids, and her father is the captain of an entire police force. Gwen had her first boyfriend at seven.

Basically: this is cheese.

That being said, sneaking after Norman Osborne's correspondent isn't as difficult as sneaking boys into her room. Singpurwallah walks past her, and then keys in a code for the doorway. He goes in.

Gwen keys in the code and the door unlocks. She's in a corridor, and she sees a glowing blue room at the end, humming with power. It's a cylindrical revolving chamber, with multi-faceted walls covered in spider web. Gwen stares.

"This is what Connors does with gene-splicing," she says to herself. She walks in. The revolving hum is soothing, the blue light on the edge of therapeutic. She sees different species of spiders crawling on the walls.

And then Gwen Stacy plucks a webstring.

 

 

 

 

 

 

If there were ever a novel written about Gwen, it would be titled  _Research Methods: a love story._

Gwen searches up every viable possibility over her transformation. She consults arachnid experts at Oscorp. She flips through medical textbooks of all possible bug bites. She exhausts every resource.

It's still not enough. Something's wrong. Something is growing and changing under her skin, and Gwen knows she should be concerned, should be reporting her symptoms, but it feels  _natural_ somehow, something ingrained, something that belongs to her--and she's never felt such  _ownership_ of her own body before, it was always something that belonged to other people, to someone else,  _nice tits,_ Peter's camera,  _you're a really good subject._  So Gwen lies back and lets it happen, feels her muscles grow and her veins shrink, and and and

and one day Gwen Stacy, seventeen, a Good Girl, wakes up new.

 

 

 

 

 

Peter Parker is working with Dr. Connors.

Gwen sees them through the glass walls of her work space after school. They're inputting an algorithm into a simulator. They're scribbling in notebooks and on whiteboards. They're injecting mice with a serum.

Peter meets her eyes once or twice. She never looks away first. At least he doesn't have a camera.

 

 

 

 

 

"He's got a picture of you on his computer," the man named Uncle Ben smiles at her, clearly trying to humiliate his nephew, and Peter absolutely  _panics._

"Does he," she says, dry as the desert. "Isn't that surprising." 

Gwen just  _looks_  at him. Peter gulps.

 

 

 

 

 

Peter Parker's uncle has died.

Gwen takes her attention away from her own personal crisis for a moment and focuses on Peter. Flash has stopped beating him up at school, which is good because Gwen's getting tired of intervening in the fights. Peter goes through all the right motions, walks through hallways like a zombie.

Gwen brings him his homework sometimes. Aunt May's nice enough welcoming her in, and her eyes seem sad, and Gwen's heart aches for her.

She takes the books up to Peter's room one day and knocks. Peter opens the door. Out of the corner of her eye Gwen sees an elaborate electric lock sliding into place.

"Hey."

"Hey. I got you History."

"Thanks." Peter takes the books. They stand in silence for a minute.

Gwen sighs. "I wanna know what you're doing with Dr. Connors."

Peter stares at her. "Is that what this is," he says, not really a question.

"This isn't about your uncle," Gwen whispers. "It's about your father." Peter blinks. Gwen takes a deep breath.

"That folder Singpurwallah was carrying? What did you think it was for?"

Peter takes a step back and lets her in. "We're going to be here for a while," he tells her.

 

 

 

 

Peter's father was a genius.

It's not that surprising, Gwen admits, considering who Peter is and what he can do. Even so. Gwen, she knows excellence when she sees it. In Dr. Connors, in Peter, in Richard Parker's neat scrawl.

"Let me get this straight: you found an old briefcase in your basement, looked through it, and just happened to find this formula?"

Peter nods. "And this extra variable right here, it's the key to Connors' equation. We've run it through the algorithm a million times. It works. It's here."

Gwen looks at all the other pages scattered on the floor. "He finally found what he was looking for," she says. The calculations are written in a steady hand. Gwen thinks they're beautiful. Peter thinks they're beautiful. Richard Parker thought they were god.

"What, for a regenerative property serum?"

"Connors has personal reasons for driving this theory forward." Gwen thinks of Connors' sad eyes, the way he lets his arm dangle, the jokes he tells to the interns to pass off his disability, and sighs. She takes a page of calculations from Peter's hand. "Lizards regrow limbs, so he's been splicing their DNA. You did all this?"

"Yeah, it's been difficult. I haven't had a lot of free time."

"Why, too busy skipping class, trying to find your uncle's murderer?" Gwen asks, and it's not a slip, it's not an accident. Having weird spidey senses means you make a good spy. She's seen Peter slip in and out of classrooms, bruises on his face, black eyes and raw knuckles. She's her father's daughter, Connors' mentee, and Gwen Stacy, seventeen years old, is not an idiot. She may not know about things like tragedy and anger, but she knows hurt when she sees it. She knows crime when she sees it. 

Peter cringes. "That's none of your business."

"You're right, it's not," Gwen retorts. "But this only ends one way. My dad's a cop, I know."

"Then you know too much already," Peter says, and begins shoving the papers back into his father's briefcase.

"What are you planning on doing when you find this guy? Are you going to  _kill_ him?" Gwen puts a hand on his arm, and he stops moving. "You're throwing your life away for some idiot who robbed a store and fired a gun?"

"He killed my uncle," Peter growls.

"Your uncle stepped in front of an armed criminal," Gwen retorts, because she's her father's daughter, and Gwen looks at it from a policeman's perspective, she always has, she always will, she can't help it. 

Peter snaps the briefcase shut and the room goes eerily silent for a second.

"Don't you  _dare,"_  Peter begins, and Gwen interrupts.

"I'm not blaming him. But putting your life on hold for this? Getting into fights in the city every night?"

"Your dad's a cop; I knew you wouldn't understand." Peter is almost sneering, and that hurts for some reason.

"It won't bring him back."

"It'll be something!" Peter shouts, and Gwen wonders if Aunt May can hear. "At least it'll be  _something,_ instead of what I have now, which is  _nothing._  You have no  _idea_ what that's like."

It's raining. There's a boom of thunder. Gwen didn't bring an umbrella.

"No," she shakes her head.

"I don't."

She gathers her things, gets up and leaves, leaves, leaves.

 

 

 

 

 

So Gwen practices jumping, muscle memory from years of ballet coming into play from where it had been sleeping, coiled in her limbs. She's a scientist. Gwen will always be a scientist. Experimentation is a habit. Gwen makes it into a game.

She practices leaping, and then she trains herself to trust herself to catch herself.

She tests the speed of her reflexes. She jumps. Gwen trips and skips and twirls like the dancer she is. Gwen Stacy learns how to fall.

 

 

 

 

She goes out one night and sees two guys ganging up on a girl in an alley.

It's quick work, and she follows the girl home afterward to make absolutely sure she's safe.

And it feels good. It feels powerful.

 

 

 

 

 

Gwen Stacy steals a portable police radio from her father.

Gwen Stacy builds a suit. She adds a hood.

Gwen Stacy tears the suit in a minor altercation with a thug in an alleyway.

Gwen Stacy almost electrocutes herself at a Robotics competition.

Gwen Stacy makes modifications to the suit.

Gwen Stacy fails Econ.

Gwen Stacy builds spiderwebs and dischargers.

 

 

 

 

Gwen Stacy looks into the mirror one day,

and Gwen Stacy builds a mask.

 

 

 

 

Gwen Stacy's never found it easy to explain why she became a superhero, but she knows why she stays one.

 _There are no gods but the ones we create,_ she thinks to herself one day, and wonders if that means she has some sort of complex.

Well, then. There's a bank robbery going on down at 5th, and Gwen swings in through the window and lands perfectly on her feet, webs the armed intruders in three seconds flat. "I've arrived," she says, and this time, the cameras whir, and the citizens are screaming, and world is watching, and everyone hears her.

 

 

 

 

The press haven't really caught on, but her father sure as fuck has.

"There's this crazy vigilante woman at all these bank robberies," her father laments at dinner. "She's absolutely nuts. Eyewitness reports say she has these little black disks on her wrists and guess what she shoots from them?  _Webs._ Honest-to-god, artificially-made spider webs. The goddamn insanity."

Gwen shoves potatoes into her mouth to hide her grin. Strict parents raise rebellious kids, and her father is Captain fucking Stacy. Gwen had her first boyfriend at seven.

Again: cheese.

 

 

 

 

Her father is disapproving, but Gwen's used to it by now, though it stings when he shakes his head at the latest news, starts a campaign to end Spiderwoman, some sort of public witch hunt. The scientific community are all speculating, including Gwen's coworkers at Oscorp. Gwen putters a few fake theories around, gets the word up to Connors, and watches the lies spread like fire.

Nobody at school can stop talking about how sexy the suit is.

Gwen sees Peter Parker reading the paper one day, with her headline on the cover: SPIDERWOMAN, FRIENDLY MENACE? Gwen has to cover her smile.

 

 

 

 

It's mostly gangs, at first. 

She's New York's hottest new celebrity vigilante, and so Gwen thinks strategically, starts small. Word gets around that she patrols the streets at night, and public muggings are brought to an all-time low. Then robberies. 

She aids the police. One time an idiot burglar shoots out at random, misses her father by inches, and Gwen webs him in the face twenty times in five seconds flat. George Stacy looks up and orders her to freeze. 

 _Sorry, dad,_ Gwen thinks, and she leaps and leaves, gets home in time for dinner to hear her father complain about the crazy spider lady.

At first she sticks close to her dad, follows him around on his dispatches, webs criminals and intruders before they can get a shot at him. It's sort of a fulfillment fantasy, being able to have her dad's back in danger, even if he doesn't want it. Maybe she can prevent the nightmares she's been having about him since she was six. All it takes is a stray bullet, and Peter Parker is a ghost at school, and Gwen doesn't want to be like Peter Parker, doesn't want to lose someone that way.

The public loves her. They scream when she flies over them. They wear her merchandise at school--T-shirts and sneakers and socks. She's a rockstar. She's a vigilante. She's a criminal. She's a hero. She's an idiot teenage girl. She's a genius. She's human, she's alien, she's a weird kid with a fetish for spiders. Gwen Stacy, seventeen, and everyone wants a piece of her, everyone wants a piece of Spiderwoman.

 

 

 

 

 

The headlines are hilarious. 

They sexualize it, of course, her in the suit, photoshop making her chest swell to an impressive size, her ass curvier, her legs longer. There's one where she's flying between skyscrapers and they manage to cut some weight off her abdomen. People speculate about how well they can  _really_ see her bra under the skintight suit, and she's a 34D on page five, a 37 on page six, which means a 30 on People's Magazine.

She has the inexplicable urge to paste the clipping on the fridge.

 

 

 

  

But there are nights Gwen's cracked too many ribs to breathe easily, nights when she gets nightmares, nights when the screaming in her head won't stop.

( _Seventeen,_ and the light's almost out, almost, not enough, she lies to her mother and steals from her father and wears a mask every night and sometimes she thinks she forgets to peel it off, to leave the suit at the door and just be Gwen Stacy again, but no one ever taps on Spiderwoman's mask and says  _come out, Gwen, we miss you, we need you,_ and that's good, that's perfect, why would they, they're right.)

 

 

 

 

 

Peter Parker still thrums for vengeance, but that doesn't mean that he can't socialize like a normal boy his age, or that Gwen can't ask him out.

"Dinner at my house. Branzino?" Gwen leans against his locker. She's taken to wearing the suit under her clothes more often, the white latex hood poking out through her shirt. It fits well under her jeans, and if that means goodbye to her miniskirts, well, too bad. It's like an armor. She loves it.

Peter blinks at her. "Branzino," he states flatly.

Gwen nods. "My mom's making it for dinner tonight. I thought you'd like to come."

Peter shakes himself out of whatever daze he'd been in, looks at the floor, and nods. Well then.

 

 

 

 

 

Dinner is a disaster.

Dad, who's been on a bad streak with Spiderwoman lately, goes completely crazy over what Peter says about vigilante superheroes--and Gwen's heart is warmed at Peter's words, but really, maybe she should have coached him ahead of time on her father's opinions.

She follows Peter to the balcony. "That went spectacular," she says, and Peter smiles faintly, staring out into the city.

"You don't believe that stuff about Spiderwoman, do you?" he asks her. "She's doing the right thing. She's...she's fighting for people who can't fight for themselves." There's a dark edge to his tone.

Gwen tilts her head. "Are you hoping that she'll catch your uncle's killer?" She tries to keep her tone neutral. Peter sighs.

"Your dad was right about that shit, about holding onto vengeance. It's destructive. I mean, it was part of the original reason I liked her, but now..." he shakes his head. "No. No, I don't want her to kill him."

Gwen lets out a breath she hadn't known she'd been holding. "Good," she breathes, and then webs his jeans, snaps him closer to her. She muffles his shocked scream with her mouth, and it's good. It's good.

 

 

 

 

Dad's ballistic that she's dating Peter.

"Gwen, honey, you could do so much better than that boy," he shakes his head, stirring her hot chocolate. "Don't you think--"

"Dad, it's  _none_ of your business who I date," Gwen snaps, because she's never liked giving anyone control over her, and she's not going to start now, not with Peter and  _especially_ not with her father, "And I like him. A lot. And you have to be okay with that." She doesn't give him any other option. Gwen leaves, and then backtracks. She picks up her hot chocolate, and then she leaves. 

Later, he knocks on her door.

"Of course it's your decision, and of course it's none of my business. I'm sorry, honey. I'll try my best to be supportive." His face says otherwise, but at least he made the effort. Gwen hugs him. This, she can deal with. Him bitching out about Spiderwoman, well, that's harder.

 

 

 

 

 

Their second date, and Gwen takes Peter Parker flying.

They're standing on top of Oscorp when she looks him in the eye, and asks him, "trust me?"

Peter nods.

And then the world was three. Her. Him. And speed.

 

 

 

 

 

If Peter Parker had been bitten instead.

If Peter had become what Gwen is now, if he had been given a _purpose_  after his uncle's death, instead of nothing, instead of useless, aimless wandering, Gwen thinks Peter Parker would be a considerably lighter person.

He's seeing the school counselor per her recommendation, and it seems to help a little, though Peter still gets into fights at school and in the city. He goes to class with his face bruised and black, and the only reason he's even doing his homework is because Gwen is pushing him, hard.

And...she doesn't know what to do. She's known people with depression, the soul-sucking whirlpool of bipolar disease her Aunt Charmin suffers from, but Peter is something different. He's good-turned-bad, former straight-A science geek who stood up to bullies, a noble protector of other nerds. He wears a lot of black now, goes and punches stuff, bruises his knuckles and face. Some days he avoids Gwen like the plague, and can't stand to be touched. Other days he can't keep his hands off her.

Gwen's busy and overworked and  _always_  tired but she has time for this, for him, so one day she swings by his house and follows him out after nine. He goes into an alleyway where some guy is rough-handling his girlfriend.

"You like hitting girls?" Peter growls at the dude, and smacks him in the jaw. The guy socks him back. The girl screams at them to stop, and that's when Gwen, like a good little girlfriend (she uses the term loosely), steps in.

 

 

 

 

Afterwards.

"You don't have to follow me around," Peter snarls at her. "I don't need a handler."

Gwen's checking her nails under her hood. "Clearly," she says, trying for bored.

"Gwen."

She looks up. Peter's jaw is clenched tight. The light from the streetlamps puts highlights in his hair.

"I'm not yours," Peter finally says, deflating, "to fix."

Gwen knows this. Still, she says: "Please expound."

"I'm not your responsibility.  _I'm_ my responsibility. I don't belong to you."

"Of course not. But--"

"You think just because you have abilities now you can control me?" Peter sneers, and Gwen's taken aback, and then angry.

If it were the other way around,  _he'd_ be controlling  _her._

"This is not control. This is nowhere  _near_ control." Gwen pulls her hood down. "You are so far down you don't even realize--you know you're not in a good place right now, right? That  _has_ occurred to you, right?"

Peter glares.

"You need to stop this."

"Get off my back."

"I'm on your  _side."_

"Act like it, then," Peter snarls. He pulls his hood up, and Gwen sees that his hands are shaking. "Leave me alone."

He walks. Gwen yells, "Fine!" and webs away.

 

 

 

 

 

The following things have always frightened Peter Parker: losing the people he loves, amounting to nothing in life, the greater good, and (though he'll never admit it) the memory of his parents.

Gwen knows all of this. She tries to put it in a formula. She tries making a list. She tries drawing it with flowcharts.

But you can't solve people. She can't crack depression. She can't do a lot of things, so Gwen decides to do the thing she's good at: research.

Mental illness, bipolar disease, prescription drugs. Gwen can learn all she wants, but it can't be cured. It's livable, but it's hard as hell to live with.

Maybe Gwen can make it a little easier for him to breathe.

 

 

 

 

 

So Gwen lays off. A week goes by. Peter comes to class with a horrible-looking scar under his eye. Gwen keeps her eyes forward. She feels his gaze on the back of her neck. She refuses to turn around.

Peter meets her at her locker. "If you want out, just say so."

Gwen looks up. He looks terrible.

"What are you talking about?"

"I won't tell anyone. About Spiderwoman. If you want out then just say so and we can leave it here."

"Why would I want out?"

"This thing, it's...it's never going to get better. I'm always going to be like this. You know that, do you?" Peter's eyes are dark. "If you think I can change...I can't. At least, not now."

Gwen stares and considers. Yes, she does know that. She knows it'll be difficult, and here is Peter, here he is, offering her an alternative. Being self-sacrificial and shit, because it's clear he doesn't want her to leave. She can see it. He doesn't.

But at the same time Gwen knows about dragging people down to hell with you, and it's not something you do to people you care about, and so you let them go. You have to. The alternative is too sad to think about.

But Gwen wants to be gotten.

She closes her locker and leans on it. Peter's waiting.

"I'm pushy, so I'll insist that you do your homework, which of course is up to you. And we need to have another talk about boundaries later but right now I want you to walk me to class."

"You're being kind of bossy," Peter remarks, and that's half a smile. Gwen knows it won't last. She knows that there will be weeks when Peter will refuse to look at her and then weeks of that loving, overbearing,  _suffocating_  intensity of affection. But she'll deal. They both will. They can do this. People like Gwen don't give up, and there are no people like Gwen.

"Biology," Gwen prompts him, and he waves his hand in a flourish. They start down the hallway together.

 

 

 

 

Gwen, seventeen-year-old superhero, has it all: boyfriend, internship, perfect grades (except Econ), Spiderwoman. Life's not perfect, but it's really, really good.

Still. There are things she wants. She wants the ugly voices in Peter's head to skip town and never come back. She wishes her dad would be more understanding of vigilantes. She wishes that  _fucking boob job rumor would go away._ But all in all, she's on top.

And then Dr. Connors solves the formula, using the variable Peter gave him.

And then it all goes to shit.

 

 

 

 

 Another difference between Gwen and Peter: Gwen knows how to let things go, things like dreams and childhood and innocence. Ballet. Relationships. If she had to, she could let go of Peter. She knows she could. Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and let it slip through your fingers, like wind, like smoke. Say goodbye like it's nothing, because that's what it is. It's nothing.

Peter hangs on. Peter clings. It's a byproduct of losing his parents so young, Gwen's sure, a grief so thick and entwined within him that slowly, it became a part of who he is. Peter clings to his uncle, to his father, to Gwen, and that is why he gives the formula to Dr. Connors, because there cannot be a world where Peter Parker does not want  _more._

Peter is a messed-up kid, emotionally unstable and damaged, has never had to be Good but somehow ended up like that anyway, and Connors preyed on that, took advantage of it, and so Peter Parker gives Connors the formula because maybe he could have a family again. Maybe for once he can mean something, for once he can matter, and the city goes into chaos, and Gwen's father dies as a direct result.

 

 

 

 

But right now:

The giant lizard monster is at her school, at  _Gwen's_ school, in her hallways, her kingdom, her sanctuary.

In the middle of the fight, Peter Parker comes up out of  _nowhere_ and beans Connors' lizard head with a science trophy. The monster roars, and Peter flinches, and the trophy head is smashed.

"That's my _first place in Regional Robotics!"_ Gwen yells at him, and Peter winces.

Connors hisses, then flees the scene.

And then, later:  he heads to Oscorp.

Gwen had just sent Peter there to brew an antidote, unarmed, like a lamb to the slaughter.

Gwen curses, then runs.

 

 

 

 

Seven years old, and Gwen's mother sits in the audience with her. The ballet starts, and Gwen tugs at mom's hand, look at that, look at that.

Her mother smiles because people like Gwen are not good inside but people like Gwen know how to hide it, and there are no people like Gwen.

Now Gwen stares at the ground, wonders what her father will think, what her mother will say.

 

 

 

 

George Stacy has his daughter at gunpoint.

He has her at gunpoint in the middle of the street. Around them, above them, the world is ending.

"He's headed to Oscorp." Gwen feels tears emerge, tilts up her chin so they won't fall. "He's going to infect the entire city. I have to stop him. You have to let me go."

George Stacy looks at his daughter. He blinks, again and again.

"Gwen,  _what--_ " he looks at her, in her suit, at the discarded mask at her feet. And his face twists with horror. "What have you done to yourself? What were you  _thinking?_ "

Gwen's lip trembles.  _Fuck._ "It was an accident, dad."  _Don't cry don't fucking cry._ "I can explain later. I have to  _go_."

She reaches down, feels for the mask. She doesn't take her eyes off her father. She pulls it on, lets him see: Gwen Stacy is not a Good Girl. She feels his terror.

"Gwen, no." George Stacy raises his gun, but his arm trembles. "I  _forbid_  you."

And this is what they mean when they say, the point of no return. This is where everything changes. This is where Gwen breaks a promise she hasn't even made yet. "You can't stop me."

Somewhere, Gwen realizes she's outgrown him, outgrown the part of herself who had always needed him. "Nobody makes my decisions for me. This is my choice."

She keeps her eyes on him until he finally lowers his gun. Gwen turns and flings herself away, but not before some crackshot cop gets a bullet out. "Don't shoot!" she hears her father shout, but it's too late. It hits her leg. Gwen stumbles in midair, barely makes the jump. The pain makes her head snap back.

No matter. Connors didn't need an arm. She can go without a leg. Fair fight, and all that.

 

 

 

 

The mask's off, ripped to shreds somewhere. Between one breath and the next she feels Connor's clawed hand seize her hair and slam her face into the concrete floor. Her vision explodes, all the neat, complicated, brilliant threads of possibility in her mind shattering into prisms of light and color and the taste of coconut. There are things breaking inside of her face that probably won't be good for her future headlines that read "Smoking Hot Captain Wins National Trophy Again" in Midtown Science's paper.

"You know, you were always my favorite," the monster says, pounding her head into the concrete again.

"Gee, Doc" Gwen laughs up from the ground. "Would I be here if I weren't?"

 

 

 

 

When she was little her mother had taken her into an empty dance studio--the nice one, lined with mirrors with a tape player in the corner. She put in a tape, gently guided Gwen's small hand onto the bar, and proceeded to teach--first position, second position, fifth position, plie, arabesque. The sound rolled out of the speakers, quick tempo recordscratch, into the dust caught in the light of the huge windows, and Gwen had remembered--cool hands on her own, spinning around in a large empty room, the feeling of floating on her feet.

She still goes to the ballet with her mother every Christmas.  _The Nutcracker._ Her old favorite. Some things don't change if you don't want them to. They stick. They stay. Broken Tchaikovsky notes, fumbling first dance steps, Gwen Stacy, seven years old, and she knows--one day she's going to  _fly._

 

 

 

 

Gwen gets up, and the first thing she realizes is that she's not alone. Someone's coming.

She crawls over in the direction Connors is, who's fiddling with the liquid nitrogen tanks. Everything inside her is screaming. Her face feels like it's on fire.

The hairs on the back of her neck prickle. Her father's here. He's here, and he shouldn't be. He's keeping to the shadows behind her. Gwen staggers up to Connors, her face a mess, her head pounding.

"That you, Gwen?" Connors asks. "Thought I left your brains on the floor."

Behind her, the leather of her father's gloves creak ominously. Gwen clears her throat. "Regenerative...healing, doc. You should...know. Your formula." She pauses. "Richard Parker's formula."

"Peter's alive, don't worry," Connors says. "I saw him in the labs."

Gwen doesn't know whether to believe him. "Don't do this, doc."

Connors shakes his head. "Gwen. You've never understood, have you?"  And then he moves.

She still can't believe how  _fast_ he is. Quick as can be, Connors snatches her up by the throat. Gwen gags, suddenly seeing double, stars exploding behind her eyes, supernovae and space dust spinning endlessly.

"Poor Gwen Stacy. All alone. Pitiful.  _Weak."_

 _I'm not weak,_ Gwen remembers this fact somehow, somewhere. "I'm Spiderwoman," she grits out, and Connors laughs.

"Gwen," and his face splits itself into a grin, " _you're not a woman."_

And, she realizes, he's right.

 

 

 

  

"She's not alone." Bullets spray Connor's arm, and Gwen's free, free and flying. Her father hands her a serum. "Gift from Peter. Go. I got this."

Gwen leaps. Shit happens. Metal flies into her face, the healing serum is put into place and rains over New York, Connors sheds his skin and is back to normal, and her father--her father--

 

 

 

 

Seventeen, and here is what Gwen knows: that grief is a twisting, clawing thing, that guilt is even worse, that her mother looks at her and doesn't know,  _can't_ know, but she can tell that there is something Gwen is keeping from her.

Her mother calls her more often now, every day after school, calls each and every one of her brothers, won't breathe until they pick up the phone. When Gwen answers, her voice shakes.

"How was your day, honey?"

"Good. I'm fine."

"Good, good. I've made pasta. Hurry home, okay?"

Her teachers take it easy on her the weeks after, and she gets A's on all the completely shit papers she writes. She knows they're shit because she did them in ten minutes, but nobody seems to care.  _Gwen Stacy, lost her father last Saturday--poor girl. So bright. So pretty._

Her supervisors at Oscorp have ushered away Connors' research materials, stripped him of his license and honors, transplanted all the interns under his care to Biometrics instead. His office is packed away, shipped off somewhere, making room for a new lab. Every time she walks past it she has to resist the urge to throw something at the glass windows.

Her brothers are braver than her. Quiet at the funeral, quiet during the day, and Gwen wants to scream at them, because their silence is so wrong--little boys should  _cry._

He was their  _father._

 

 

 

 

Gwen stares past Peter's face, at his front door, Aunt May busy cooking something in the kitchen. "I killed him."

It's a fact. She knows it like she knows her own blood.

Peter's very, very quiet.

"It was my fault." Gwen doesn't know if she's cried yet. She can't remember if she has. She'd been dry-eyed at the funeral. "It was my fault, and I couldn't tell my mom. I couldn't tell anyone."

"It wasn't your fault."

Gwen stares at the Parkers' door. Didn't Peter get it? It was about rage, and skill, and the threat, and she hadn't been there, hadn't been fast enough.

What good are her abilities if she can't save the one person who mattered?

Peter takes her hand.

"I'm sorry," Peter says, because he's never been afraid of it. 

Gwen just keeps staring at the door, thinks about flying from her father's wrists, the weight of him holding her down, like gravity, always pulling her towards him, always drawing her in, and then suddenly nothing, cutting the ribbon, letting her float off towards space, alone.

 

 

 

 

Gwen Stacy plants her foot onto the ledge of Oscorp Tower and leans over, thinking about freefall and terminal velocity.

 

 

 

 

 Later--much, much later, when she has the mask on--when no one can see her--she closes her eyes and  _breathes._

It's escapist, in a way, but also--he'd told her to stop, he'd made her promise, but she was just swinging, just  _flying,_ really, it wasn't saving people, it wasn't the same thing--for once in her life, she can be someone invincible.

New York is her playground. She flies, and she can feel the wind through her mask and sometimes she barely makes a jump and it's amazing, she has to snap out her wrist in dangerous split-second calculations, and then  _whoosh,_ she's off again.

She clenches her teeth against the wind and the cold and doesn't think of her father, doesn't think of Peter--she just needs to swing. Just for a day. Just to remember what it was like, being on top of the world.

 

 

 

 

"I don't think we should see each other anymore."

Peter looks like he's been prepared for this. "I know what you're going to say."

"Peter."

"You can't just press a button and make this stop, Gwen. It doesn't work like that."

"I'm hitting pause."

"Liar."

Gwen turns her head away. She can't believe she's forgotten. Peter clings.

"I'm sorry."

Peter grips her hand tighter.

"You're not the only one, Gwen." He sounds half-angry, half-tired.

"Peter."

"Uncle Ben died because of me," Peter reveals, and Gwen stops at that.

"We got into a fight about--about a lot of things. My dad. Responsibilities. I was helping--I was doing some research for  _Connors,_ figuring out my dad's stupid formula and I forgot to pick up Aunt May from work."

Gwen closes her eyes. Let go, Peter. Let go.

"I was late, and Uncle Ben told me off, and I was angry. I walked out of the house. Wouldn't answer my phone. I went to a store. And some guy robbed the cashier, and he ran out, and I didn't stop him."

Gwen can't breathe.

"He had a gun. Uncle Ben tried--he was right outside the store, and I didn't know, I didn't know." Peter's voice trembles, and Gwen wonders how many times he's told this story.

"Don't use this as an excuse."

"I'm  _not."_

"It doesn't change anything."

"It  _does._  I know what I'm getting into, Gwen. I don't care. Keep me."

His fingers are still resting on her wrist. If she listens hard enough, she can hear his heartbeat. She can feel it beat across her own skin. She can read every bone in his body, can call them off by name. She can't say the same for herself. Inside, Peter's human. Inside, she's something else.

And everything in her is telling her to do it, to give it all up, for him.  _Do it,_ her mind screams,  _do it. Say yes. Be happy!_

But Gwen is too stubborn, or too proud, to give it all up. "I can't."

"Yes you can. Keep me. Do it. I love you."

_I don't want you to love me. I want you to stay away from me._

"Gwen."

 _You did not see him,_ a different part of Gwen thinks, _You did not hold him on that rooftop. You did not scream at him to come back. You weren't there. You don't know._

But Peter--Peter, who lost his mother and father, who held his uncle as he bled out on the street--maybe he did.

 

 

 

 

Give up Spiderwoman. Keep your father's promise.

Keep Peter. People die.

Alternatively: don't give it up. Keep saving people. Serve New York when it needs you.

Break your promise. Lose Peter.

Gwen's thought herself into corners over and over again, and she can't think her way out of this one. Some lines are too blurry to cross.

 

 

 

 

 

Gwen's eyes slide shut. "You're going to be okay."

"Please don't go," Peter whispers, and she hears his tears.

"You have Aunt May and Dr. Ideker to help you--"

"Gwen, don't."

"Just remember to take your meds--"

"Please _._ "

"You're gonna be okay," she says it again because she hopes it's true. He reaches for her and she snaps.

"I break up with you." Gwen says it like they're the magic words, and Peter reels. "I. Break up. With you."

Spell cast. Work done. She leaves, because Gwen knows how to let things go, always has, and maybe there are a few exceptions (her father) but Peter is not one of them.

And Peter completely loses it.

 

 

 

 

They don't talk at school. Gwen stares straight down at her desk, moves her pencil across paper, doesn't look over her shoulder. She knows he's there. She can feel him watching.

At night she hears her father's voice in her head. Sees the blood on her hands, all over his abdomen.

She hears Connors' laughter, evil and crawling, and slams her textbook closed.

 

 

 

 

Peter loses it.

Gwen knows he's strong, but he's always been fragile when it came to the people he cares about, and Gwen wishes she weren't on that list. Gwen's always been able to let go of the things that hurt her. Peter never could. Peter never lets go of anything.

She doesn't even see him in class anymore. He skips.

She swings by alleyways and finds him there, meeting the guys punch for punch. She helps, a little--webs the other man to a wall, and then leaves before Peter turns around. Peter calls after her--not her name, that would give her away. But he shouts. She doesn't look back.

 

 

 

 

Gwen sees a man get mugged in an alley. She walks past.

 

 

 

 

 

In her dreams she can pinpoint where she went wrong. 

In reality, it had gone like this: her father, bleeding out on a rooftop, her hands frantically trying to apply pressure to his wound, his empty gun discarded at the side.

"Dad? Dad, dad, just hang on, okay? Hang on."

He rasped, and Gwen flew into panic mode. It was every childhood nightmare she'd ever had about her father, about him never coming back, and she flew into action. She knotted her fingers together, pressed hard. His uniform squelched with the wetness. He sucked in air through clenched teeth.

"Gwen. I was--I was wrong. Listen to me. I was wrong about you," and she saw his eyes, exactly like hers, glinting. "This city needs a hero like you."

Gwen hadn't processed it at the time, hadn't thought to, but later on she'd realize this was the closest he'd ever come to praising her.

"Dad, just hang on, an ambulance is coming--"

"But it's dangerous. You're gonna make enemies. They're going to hurt the people you're closest to."

Gwen looked down at the blood on her hands,  _they already have._

"Which is why," Captain Stacy went on, his eyes shining, "I need you to promise me something." He put his hand on top of hers, still resting on his stomach.

" _Stay out of it."_

Gwen choked. Looking down at him, at the blood loss, at how dizzy he was--and the denial was running through her veins _, the ambulance is coming, he'll be alright, I have plenty of time to convince him, it'll be alright_ \--and she nodded.

Captain Stacy's hand went slack. Gwen panicked. "Dad!"

"Gwen." His eyes fell shut, a small smile on his face. "Love you."

"Dad, hold on, wait--" he shuddered, once. Gwen froze.

And then she was screaming.

 

 

 

 

If he were alive.

If George Stacy were alive, Gwen would tell him, no.

If George Stacy were alive, Gwen would say, when I was little I would never know if you were coming home. It used to terrify me. I had to live with that. Maybe now you have to live with my choices.

If he were alive.

 

 

 

 

They're rebuilding Oscorp from Connors' attack. After work she goes up to the rooftop. She stands over the place where he died and stares through the balcony and the scaffolding, down at the city she'd saved for the price of a man she loved.

She goes home to her mom cooking dinner, her brothers in their rooms. Gwen puts down her stuff and sits at the table.

"Gwen, you missed lunch. Here, have some." And her mother spoons some soup into a bowl. Three weeks. Three weeks since her father hasn't come home, since Gwen stood in front of his casket, and Gwen looks at her beef stew,  _what can I say, mom, what can I say?_

"Mom?" Gwen looks at the framed photos of her father on the walls, the love that they were placed there with, his Captain's badge hanging there next to their family Christmas photo, and--

"Yeah honey?"

_I killed dad._

Gwen swallows.

"Nothing."  _He bled out on the roof and I couldn't stop screaming. At him. At the city. And it wasn't even grief. I wasn't sad._

_I was so angry._

"Can I have another bowl when I'm done?"

"Sure, Gwen."

 _Maybe I'm the monster._ "I have to go study with some friends later."  _When this is all over please don't think I'm a monster._

"No problem, Gwen." Her mother smiles, rare. She turns away, because daughters aren't supposed to see their mothers cry. "Be careful. Don't...don't stay too late."

"I won't."

 

 

 

 

Gwen had read a quote once: Knowledge is knowing Frankenstein is not the monster. Wisdom is knowing that Frankenstein  _is_  the monster.

Well. Literature's never been her forte.

"Gwen." Doctor Connors stretches out, sits up on his cot. Through the prison bars Gwen can see the way his hair droops in front of his eyes, the way his wrist trembles.

He's been waiting.

She eyes his stump and wonders how much farther the serum would've changed him.  _I could've been you,_  she realizes.

"Hello Dr. Connors." Gwen stays still. "I'm here to kill you."

Connors doesn't look surprised. He turns to the single window in his cell--far too much luxury, in Gwen's unwanted opinion.

"I'm sorry, Gwen. I'm so sorry." His voice is kind, as always. She wants to throw up.

"I don't care." It's surprising how light her voice is. She curls her body forward, leans her forehead against the bars. She'd foregone the suit tonight, chosen a black outfit. It didn't feel right to wear Spiderwoman's suit. The suit was for saving people.  Black is a color for murder. She feels like a shadow.

(She's back to seventh grade, Jane Brown sitting next to her and pointing at calculations on the laptop, "just like that, Gwen, you got it, you got it," and that was her genesis, wasn't it.

Who knew how far she'd come. How low she'd fall.)

She clears her throat. With her vision she can see him perfectly despite the dark. "You called me your daughter once."

She says it just to see him flinch. Peter may have reforged his ways, may have let bygones be bygones, given up on the hunt for his uncle's--let's face it, his _father's_ \--killer, but Gwen's staring hers down in the dark, right now. Right here.

Maybe she's not that good at letting things go.

"Gwen." Connors is shaking his head, and something is so tender, so breakable in his voice. Whatever it is, Gwen wants to crush it. "It would make you no better than me."

"I'm _nothing_  like you." She spits it out.

"I know. It's the best thing about you." Connors finally, finally looks at her. In the dark her vision adjusts to see his eyes, somber. "But do this, and you will be."

Gwen thinks about it. Snapping his neck in half. Leaving his body in pieces on the floor. And she shrugs, ignores the twinge of _wrongness_  inside of her. "Maybe I'm okay with that."

"You aren't. I know you aren't."

She understands what Peter went through, now. His thirst for vengeance. His inconsolable, desperate rage. Backed into a corner, and then fight with what you have, whether that be with your strength or your fists or your teeth or your nails or your grief.

Fight them. Fight the world, it doesn't matter if you can't throw a punch, as long as you can take one. Get up and keep going.

"You killed my father."

Connors is silent. Gwen continues, feels her eyes burn in the dark.

" _You_  killed him." Gwen curls her hands around the bars, shaking with the desire. It feels like hunger. Like tectonic plates smashing together. Like a level 5 hurricane. Like a volcanic eruption.

"Gwen." His goddamn voice, more urgent now. "If you do this, then you lose everything."

Spiderwoman. Peter.                                          

"I'm one of the  _good_  guys," Gwen says, and she doesn't mean for it to come out in a sob. It's something she believes, something she has to believe. Gwen Stacy is not a Good Girl, but she's one of the good guys. She has to be. Otherwise, what is she? What the fuck is she?

"Then you won't be for long." Connors turns his eyes to the wall. "Are you ready to give her up?"

 

 

 

 

Gwen thinks about the suit, about flying through the air. Standing up to bullies. Protecting the ones who cannot protect themselves. Being a Good Girl. Fighting for justice.

Her father, pinning a badge to his chest every morning.

 

 

 

 

"You think that even after you do me in, you can still keep her? That you can still have both?" Connors stands. Gwen's never seen him so tall. "You can't. You will  _never_  get her back. You give her up right now, and never put on the mask again. Or you leave. And you keep the best part of yourself."

"Monster," she says.

"You're not a monster, Gwen, you're an anomaly." And here Gwen imagines scaly skin, claws that sank through flesh and bone. She thinks of her own monster, Richard Parker's creation--enhanced senses, reflexes, defying gravity,  _freak freak freak._ Bug girl, spliced genes, fuzzy legs, laying eggs, eight eyes, half-revolting and half-normal, it makes her sick.

"The world needs someone like you. Do not throw that away because of me. I wouldn't be able to bear it."

"You're a murderer," Gwen whispers.

"Yes, I am." Connors doesn't fidget, meets her gaze evenly. Thunder clashes outside his window. "But are you?"

 

 

 

 

Afterwards.

Gwen goes home. She puts her bag down and collapses on the floor. Her brothers are asleep. The lights are off.

Her mother walks in on her two hours later, crying in the dark.

"Is it true?" Gwen sobs, thinking of her father, of Peter. Of Dr. Connors.

"Do I let men run my life?"

And her mother--grieving widow, loving mother, fierce and strong--leans down, takes a handful of her hair and gives it a firm tug. "No," she says, cold as ice, stronger than steel, " _I_ run your life. Remember?"

And Gwen breaks down, sags with relief. She thanks a god she never believed in, for her mother, her mother, her mother.

 

 

 

 

Some nights she has to fly.

Some nights she puts on her gear, blasts webs into the dark, swings from rooftop to rooftop until she's out of breath.

It's the closest she can get to being with him, on top of his shoulders again, flying from his arms.

And she sits there, perched on Oscorp tower, the site of her father's death, and looks down at his city, her city. She's sworn to protect it, and Gwen can't stop just because he asked her to, just because she promised, just because he's gone now.

"It's not just the flying," she says aloud, to New York, to Oscorp tower, to him, "It's helping them. Just like you did." She doesn't look over her shoulder, at the barely-there bloodstain that would be about ten meters from where she's standing. "I have to do this. I  _have_ to. I don't let anyone make my decisions for me. This is my choice."

 

 

 

 

 She arrives at Peter's doorstep. He opens when she knocks.

"I'm not giving it up." She says, and she has no mask on, this is just her, her and him, the way it was before, the way it should always be if they were to be together. "So this is goodbye."

Peter stares at her, blinking softly, his hand curled carefully over the door. She studies his fingers.

"Your father?" He says after a short second, and she shrugs.

"It's my choice."  _I was always going to let him down, anyway._ "Not his. And not yours."

"Yeah."

They stay like that for a while. Gwen's hand twitches; she wants to reach out, touch his skin.

But she's older now, and she should know better, and she has already taken so much. Peter believes in destiny, but she lives in a different _world_ than him, and her world is chaotic, and in her world Gwen gets to  _choose._

"Bye, Peter." She says. She can't bear to look at him.

"Bye Gwen."

 

 

 

 

Here is something that is true: it never gets better.

Some days she still wants to claw her own skin off to get that laughter out of her ears, her nightmares. Connors, locked up tight, but Gwen still sees him whenever she closes her eyes. She sweats all night and ruins her bedsheets. She wakes up with headaches in the morning. She sees him in her classrooms, lurking in the corner, his yellow eyes glinting and terrifying.

Peter made that. He  _made_ that.

The nightmares don't stop, will probably never stop. She nearly screams when she wakes up sometimes. Her father dies in front of her over and over and over again. Connors rips his nails through his stomach, and then his face, and then  _her_ face, her body, slices her limbs off, cuts off her tongue. She feels it all.

Here is something that is true: she breaks her promise to her father. She knows he would never forgive her.

Here is something that is true: she is not a spider nor a Good Girl nor a human, she is something half-monster and half-good, something from children's nightmares. A science experiment gone awry. She estimates that 70% of her body is still human. Gwen Stacy has nightmares of other symptoms emerging, maybe longer nails or scaly skin like Connors', or even growing eight eyes like a spider's head. The images are grotesque and sickening. 

And here is something that is true: the day she lets her promise go, she visits her father's grave and places flowers on the ground. Peter believes in predestined paths, but Gwen believes in  _choice_ and this is where she stands, where she'll always be, staring at her father in the ground, telling him,  _no._ People like Gwen harbor the worst bits of themselves, and people like Gwen can let go of things like promises and love and ballet, and people like Gwen can fight for the things they choose  _not_ to let go of, and people like Gwen live in a chaotic world, and there are no people like Gwen.

 

 

 

Gwen stands on the roof of Oscorp Tower and looks up at the few bright stars shining through the city lights. She remembers  _vastness_ , how 'up' and 'down' didn't exist. She remembers Tchaikovsky and dancing alone in a large, empty room. She remembers cutting open a cat and reading the secret of life from its innards, better than any book or bible. She remembers silence so profound her ears rang with it. She remembers her father's hands on her wrists. She remembers flying through the city, and that the stars shone like a network of neurons and electrical pulses, brilliant points of light and life breaking up the void, and Gwendolyn Stacy, eighteen and on the brink of nowhere, thinks,  _I'm getting there_.

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Safe & Sound. Capital Cities. The Bible. Swan Lake. Tchaikovsky. Redbull. Alexander McQueen. My fifth grade Biology textbook. Breast implants. High school Science Olympiad. David Jeremiah. Kafta. Marvelo. Stark Industries. Pall Malls. Blackjack. A World Without Weakness by Dr. Curt Connors. Zombieland. The Daily Bugle. People Magazine. FIRST Robotics Competition. Beethoven. The Nutcracker. Frankenstein.


End file.
